MAREX News ISS Status april 25, 2001

ISS Amateur Radio Status: April 25, 2001
ISS Packet Chat Room activated April 25
Susan Helms ISS voice
Cosmonaut day, 200 contacts
ARISS Meeting May 2001
Mount Everest?
By Miles Mann WF1F,
MAREX-NA (Manned Amateur Radio Experiment, North American Division)
ISS Packet Chat Room activated April 25:
Hi everyone, as some of you have seen, the ISS Chat Room packet was
activated last week. And to my pleasant surprise we had both Packet and
Voice contact with ISS during the Shuttle docking, which was completely
unexpected. Susan Helms and Jim Voss have both been active randomly
last week and the Packet system chat room has also be active most of the
week.
I had the pleasure of talking to Susan Helms a few times this past
week. The public was kind to Susan this week and did not over load her
too much. She worked several beginners in the eastern half of the USA.
RX 145.800
TX 144.490
Susan is a beginner at working "pile-up" on the ham band, Please be
kind.
She is try to use the new ham jargon, CQ and QRZ.
And she is getting good at it.
So, here are a few tips to follow:
1. Wait for her to say CQ or QRZ before calling.
2. If she is talking so someone else, please wait for her to say CQ/QRZ.
3. When you call her speak slowly and say your call with each
transmission followed by OVER.
Good Luck and remember, she is still learning, lets make it easy for
her.
Current ISS crew:
Expedition Two crew, Commander Yury Usachev, Flight Engineers Jim Voss
and Susan Helms
STS 100 is currently docked with ISS
http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/STS-100/index.htm
Cosmonauts Day, April 12:
The ISS crew was very busy as usual on Cosmonauts day, however Yury
Usachev was able to take some time and talk to over 200 stations in
Europe and Asia during a few of the planned orbits over Europe. There
may have been a frequency mix-up which is why no calls were heard over
North America. (We have a common world wide ISS frequency for packet ,
but not for voice)
ARISS Meeting May 2001:
The next ARISS meeting will take place the first week of May in
Amsterdam. These meetings are where amateur radio representatives from
around the world sit down and plan the future for Amateur Radio
projects for ISS. The MAREX team was very please to be invited to the
upcoming meetings and we plan on delivering the Flight Test version of
ours SpaceCam1 Slow Scan TV project during the meeting. (lets keep our
fingers crossed for a launch soon)
http://ariss.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Mount Everest:
When I told my wife I was going to Mount Everest to play ham radio, she
thought I was joking. Then when documents arrived at the house from the
http://www.summiteverest.com/
Mountain climbing expedition, she began to worry. I was invited to go
to Mount Everest to be the base camp communications engineer,
responsible for daily image and data transmission from the 18,000 ft
base camp back to the states. Of course I was going to bring plenty of
ham gear too, including the MAREX SpaceCam1 project. I figured, if it
would work on Everest at 18,000 feet, it should work on ISS at 250
Miles. At one point I needed 2 Yacks to carry the ham gear and 1 Yack
for my stuff. I was planing on sending 50-100 SSTV images per day from
Everest to the south pacific on 80 meters daily. Then have several
stations in India and Australia relay the images around the world for
all to see. Unfortunately due to the poor economy in the states , the
funding dried up. One of my sponsors had to back out. Oh We'll, the
good news is my wife is happy, and I am sleeping in a warm bed, rather
than a cot at -30 below.
The Mountain climb is still continuing and you can see the travels of
Mike Johnston on the web page. Mike will make his summit attempt
between May 1 - 20.
Good luck Mike.
New MAREX Web pages:
Check out our future ISS Projects and a large list if Mir related links
and tips on how to use the Chat room on ISS.
www.marex-na.org
Copyright 2001 Miles Mann, All Rights Reserved. This document may be
freely
distributed via the following means - Email (including listservers),
Usenet,
and World-Wide-Web. It may not be reproduced for profit including, but
not
limited to, CD ROMs, books, and/or other commercial outlets without
prior
written consent from the author.
Until we meet again
DOSVIDANIYA Miles WF1F
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